Ian Mckellen Quotes

When I was 12, I played the Artful Dodger in Cameron McKintosh's production of 'Oliver!' when it came to Toronto. Just getting the role shocked my whole family, and I don't think I realized until then just how much I loved getting up in front of people and performing.

But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.

I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.

I think theatre helped, only because it was acting experience. I got to work with a lot of directors.

I've been performing my whole life. My mom signed me up for a theater program when I was five - I was the evil queen in 'Once Upon a Mattress.'

Performing was always my thing, so when I act with another co-actor, perhaps that is why I never feel intimidated.

I used to do theatre in school and college. When I started working on television, only the camera was new. Theatre experience really helps one lose inhibitions.

I think I always knew I was going to somehow be on a stage. I was quite an extrovert, as a child. And I did a lot of music, when I was younger, so I thought I was going to go into music, but I fell into acting, in a really weird way.

I grew up in music theater playing to the audience - singing and dancing and showing off. That's really my background. But the camera's different. I think I'm more at home on stage.

I wasn't comfortable on stage for years. It was good - 18 shows. I want to do it again.

In film, other actors' performances really are not your concern. If the other actor isn't giving you what you want, act as though he were.

The stage is the opposite: you are talking loud so you can project to the back row and you know the whole play. In a movie, you are scene-to-scene; you only know the purpose of that scene. On the stage, that is artistic science. It is real, it is loving, it is truthfully you. It is two different formulas to make two different art pieces, but it is all about truth.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.

I do love acting. It's my second love and I would love to do more.

It was quite strange, because it's quite different from singing, although it's quite natural because you're used to performing or acting on stage.

I've worked with acting coaches, I've been going out on auditions and meeting with casting directors. But I'm not known as an actress.

Acting is like playing, while directing is really fun, sort of like an orgy.

Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.

The matter is - we are actors playing roles [in Planet Apes] and they happen to be in this instance apes but there's no difference. In the scenes that we're playing, if we were to block out the scenes as actors in costumes, it would be no different.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

For me, acting is not an all-consuming thing, except for the moment when I am actually doing it.

I wanted to be an actor because it gave me the opportunity to express myself in ways I wasn't comfortable expressing myself, as a kid growing up in St. Louis.

I'm open to different parts. I would love to do something where I can sing and act at the same time.

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify